Heroes are remembered, but legends never die. This was the saying of the late, great Babe Ruth. The Great Bambino, the Sultan of Swat. That rings true for the events that had occured this Sunday at Wrestlemania X8, where two icons of wrestling - The Rock and Hollywood Hulk Hogan, battled it out to see who was the ultimate wreslter.

While Hogan had lost the match at Wrestlemania, it's true that he won't ever be forgotten. As for The Rock, time will only tell if he will become like Hogan. But now, you can recreate the events that had happened last Sunday this summer, when Wrestlemania X8 hits the GameCube! I had the great opportunity to try out a playable version of this game on Sunday before the actual event, and I had a great time not only playing the game, but also chatting it up with some of the developers representing Yukes, who were in town to model the actual Wrestlemania X8 in action.

It should be noted that the game was about 60% complete from what THQ expressed to the media at the conference, so my impressions convey that of an incomplete (albeit very playable) game. The current build only featured 5 characters, consisting of Austin, Rock, Triple H, Undertaker and Kurt Angle; one arena (Smackdown) and one gameplay mode (Single Match). From what I discovered, the wrestling roster includes 44 slots - 42 slots for wrestlers and 2 slots for Edit Wrestlers. THQ clued us in on a small significant tidbit in which the nWo (Hogan, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash) will definitely be in the game, as well as numerous ECW and WCW wrestlers, such as Booker T and Mr. Monday Night himself, Rob Van Dam.

First off, the layout of the controllers was very clean and intuitive. Summarizing the face button commands: pressing the A lets you grapple, B controls striking moves, Y is used for running and the L and R triggers allow you to counter grapples and strikes respectively. The X button allows you to pick up a downed opponent. Using the directional pad lets players use taunts, up to four in total, respectively for each direction. In addition, there's also combinations of for specific actions. For example, if you happened to press Y and A at the same time, you would perform an Irish Whip on your opponent, while pressing X and A would allow you to do an instant back grapple. Y and A also allowed you to pick up an opponent into an automatic lock-up grapple, which was very cool. X and Y allowed you to flip your opponent over while they were on the ground, while L and R allowed you to counter special moves, which are performed by pressing A and B.

The timing for countering special moves was really tight, as you had to possess a great sense of timing (and luck) in order to escape them successfully, but they are spectacular. If you happened to counter Triple H's Pedigree, you would simply backdrop him, but if you countered the Undertaker's Last Ride, you would be lifted up, but then start punching him in the head, resulting in him losing his balance and falling over backwards.

Now the timing for counters in general was pretty tight, and reminded me more of No Mercy than Smackdown. You actually had to press L and R all the way down until they clicked in order to get the animation for a counter, but when you do successfully counter a move, it's pretty awesome, not only in animation, but given the fact that they also put you at a major advantage over your opponent. It reminded me a lot of the No Mercy series in that it didn't give you a huge frame-based advantage, but merely a tactical one. There were many times that I played (and saw) someone who countered an attack, and then followed up with an attack of their own only to be countered again. One thing I did notice was that everyone seemed to have the same type of counter for every attack, which is kind of weird to see. It was also possible to counter attacks if you were running as well. Finally, there were no automatic counterattacks in the game, but here's to hoping that they do include that for the final version. In a way, the defensive part of the game is very much like No Mercy with some Smackdown thrown in, with a pinch of a completely new ideas. Although it didn't seem to contain any sort of actual blocking much like the old N64 games offered.

However, the offensive part of the game is very much like Smackdown. The way each wrestler hits you as well as performs their attacks reminded me very much of Smackdown. In fact, it plays like a heavily refined Smackdown engine, as it has a very arcade-ish feel to it not only when you're striking people, but when you're also executing grappling moves. The grappling in the game takes place in two formats: ready positions and lock-up positions. The lock-up position can only occur when you pick someone off the mat, so the majority of the offense will come from a ready position, where you would press A and the directional button in order to execute a move. For example, The Undertaker had A as a Russian Leg Sweep, Up+A as a Chokeslam, Left+A as a Sidewalk Slam, Right+A as a weird looking arm wrench takedown and Down+A as the classic Tombstone. These movesets were also available while in a lock-up position. Currently each wrestler only had a couple of moves from the back grapple position (Back Slam, Sleeper Hold, Abdominal Stretch and Clothesline), but I suspect that there will be many more moves in the final version.

Special Moves were also pretty accurate, as the type of special move you would get depended largely on your character's position relative to your opponent and your position in the ring. For example, the Undertaker has 3 special moves: The Last Ride, Old School, and the Dragon Sleeper. If you execute a special move from in front of your opponent, you would get the Last Ride, and if you did it while your opponent's back was towards you, you would get the Dragon Sleeper. Finally, if your opponent was hunched over in the corner, standing (there are two positions they can be in here, standing and sitting), you would be able to get the Old School move. This applied for every wrestler that had more than one special move, such as the Rock (Rock Bottom and the People's Elbow) and Kurt Angle (Angle Slam and the Multiple German Suplexes STOLEN FROM CHRIS BENOIT... er... ahem!)

There are two main icons along the top of the screen in the playable demo: A Stamina icon and a Special Move stock icon. There was also a meter that allowed you to charge up in order to obtain another Special Move stock (3 was the maximum, but I'm sure that can be changed in the later version). The Stamina meter is a weird one though, since it wasn't visually apparent what it did, aside from a flashing red icon. While I thought it was to denote that you were on a hot streak, so to speak, THQ says it's to signify that you're becoming fatiqued, so I'll go with that explanation. Oddly enough, you could also attack the referee, as featured in Smackdown. Although you couldn't target the guy, if he happens to get in between you and your opponent, he's going down. It was also pretty amusing to see him actually counter moves if you tried to attack him, not to mention that he's pretty resilient to be able to get up and count a pin after being Pedigree'd 3 times in a row.

Despite being a 60% complete version, Wrestlemania X8 is definitely shaping up to be a great game. While I was really, really hoping for a game that was primarily an AKI-based engine instead of the Smackdown-based one that's present in Wrestlemania, the game does show signs of incoporating some of the magic found in the classic N64 titles, which would make this latest WWF edition a more enjoyable experience. Without a doubt, it will be quite interesting to see what improvements Yukes will make (they've confirmed that taunts will be cancellable so you can fool your opponent into attacking you) before its summer release date.

   Features:

• More than 40 WWF Superstars: An updated 2002 roster features a complete list of the top WWF Superstars including ex-WCW Superstars Rob Van Dam, Booker T, DDP and the Hurricane

• All-new game engine: Original game engine focusing on simulation, reversals and momentum shifts. Master each Superstar's unique wrestling style and turn the tide of the match through a combination of counters, reversals and bone-shattering finishing moves

• Champion Road: Start from the beginning and take your rookie jobber up through the ranks in quest for the Heavyweight Championship Belt

• TV-style presentation: Multiple camera angles, cut-in's and cut-away's capture all the action

• Enhanced graphics and realism: Pyrotechnics, detailed particle effects and camera flashes immerse players in the world of the WWF. Multiple crowd reactions such as cheering, booing and chanting vary in intensity and change with the action

• Create A Superstar: Choose between a variety of settings including appearance, costumes and moves to create the ultimate Superstar

• Partner control: Take control of your partner in tag team match-ups and change the course of a match

• Superstar entrances: Each Superstar will have his or her own entrance complete with full TitanTron video and signature music

• Variety of match types, multiple venues and various backstage areas: Square off in more than 40 match types, choose between six different arenas or take the action back-stage in any nine highly-detailed arenas

Many thanks go out to Reilly Brennan and Kendall Boyd of THQ for granting myself and TNL the opportunity to participate in this event, as well as Chris Carbott of WWF Wrestling Games, who I primarily played against during the conference.

   
  

··· Reno